Takeyuki Tsuda

The permanence of "temporary" migration: The "Structural embeddedness" of Japanese-Brazilian immigrant workers in Japan

For many decades, Japan was the only advanced industrial country in the world that did not rely on unskilled foreign labor. For many observers, the Japanese case demonstrated that a country could fully industrialize and sustain high levels of economic growth without becoming dependent on large populations of immigrant workers. Instead of importing immigrants, Japan was able to meet its increasing demand for unskilled labor power by effectively mechanizing and rationalizing production and further utilizing untapped sources of labor (female and elderly workers). Because of the countrys insistence on ethnic homogeneity and its refusal to accept unskilled foreign workers, Japan had been forced to optimize domestic labor productivity and supply, creating a highly efficient and competitive industrial system capable of economic expansion without immigration. This implicitly sustained a “myth of Japanese uniqueness”—the notion that Japans economic system was unique because it was based on distinctive Japanese ethnocultural qualities.

ACTING BRAZILIAN IN JAPAN: ETHNIC RESISTANCE AMONG RETURN MIGRANTS

This article examines the performative enactment of a Brazilian nationalist identity among Japanese-Brazilian return migrants in Japan as a form of autonomous ethnic resistance against Japanese assimilative pressures. By appropriating and reconstituting Brazilians nationalist symbols abroad and by intentionally acting Brazilian the Japanese-Brazilians assert their cultural differences in Japan thereby engaging in an active struggle for ethnic recognition as a distinct minority group that cannot be subsumed under a racially essentialized Japanese assumptions in which shared descent is understood to produce cultural commonalities. (authors)

Whatever Happened to Simultaneity? Transnational Migration Theory and Dual Engagement in Sending and Receiving Countries

The transnationalism literature has focused on the transborder social networks that immigrants in the receiving country maintain with their sending countries and has not sufficiently examined how such transborder connections enable them to become simultaneously engaged in both nation-states. This paper argues that simultaneity is an important part of transnationalism that distinguishes it from long-distance nationalism. We therefore need to more extensively analyse how immigrants’ transborder involvement in their home country simultaneously affects their participation in the host country. I suggest four ways in which the dynamic relationship between home- and host-country engagement can be conceived. The first is a zero-sum relationship, where increased engagement in one country leads to decreased involvement in the other. The second involves the side-by-side co-existence of sending- and receiving-country engagement without one directly influencing the other. The third is a positively reinforcing relationship, where increased engagement in one country leads to increased involvement in the other. The final option is a negatively reinforcing relationship. I illustrate these four types of transnational simultaneity with examples of migrant socio-economic, political, cultural and identity transnationalism. Finally I discuss their implications for the long-term engagement of immigrants in both sending and receiving countries.

‘I'm American, not Japanese!’: the struggle for racial citizenship among later-generation Japanese Americans

Abstract As one of the oldest Asian American groups in the USA, most Japanese Americans are of the third and fourth generations and have become well integrated in mainstream American society. However, they are still racialized as foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance. Their Asian phenotype continues to have a foreigner connotation because of large-scale immigration from Asia and an American national identity that is racially defined as white. This paper analyses how later-generation Japanese Americans are racialized as outsiders in their daily interaction with mainstream Americans, which is often accompanied by essentialized assumptions that they are also culturally foreign. In response, they engage in everyday struggles for racial citizenship by demanding inclusion in the national community as Americans despite their racial differences. It is uncertain whether such attempts to contest their racialization will cause current mono-racial notions of American identity to be reconsidered in more inclusive and multiracial ways.

Locating the Global in Transnational Ethnography

Globalization continues to be an increasingly important issue for contemporary anthropology and sociology as cross-border interconnections and the movement of peoples, capital, and culture around the world expand and intensify. Since the 1990s, an increasing number of researchers have become interested in this general topic and the literature on the subject has proliferated. Within this literature has emerged an approach of the study of globalization commonly referred to as global ethnography. Both cultural anthropology and qualitative sociology have long been focused on ethnography as their most distinctive academic contributions (Clifford 1986; Hendry 2003, 498; Marcus and Fischer 1999; Atkinson et al. 2001). However, at first glance, ethnography and globalization do not appear to be compatible as a number of scholars have noted (Burawoy 2000, 1–5; 2001, 147; Coleman 2010, 496; Gille and Riain 2002, 273; Hendry 2003, 498). Some suggest that ethnography’s confinement to the local prevents it from accessing the global (Burawoy 2000, 1–3; Peltonen 2007, 346). Globalization is often associated with macro-social processes, deterritorialized flows and networks across national borders, and large-scale international institutions and corporations that are either detached from localities or affect

Disconnected from the 'Diaspora': Japanese Americans and the Lack of Transnational Ethnic Networks

Recent scholarship often assumes that peoples of Japanese descent scattered throughout the Americas (the Nikkei) are one of the world’s diasporas. This paper argues that dispersed ethnic groups should not be considered diasporic unless they have maintained social connections with each other across national borders as members of a transnational ethnic community. By using the Japanese Americans as a case study, I analyze how they are no longer really part of a “Japanese diaspora” because they have generally lost their social connections to the Japanese homeland over the generations and do not have sustained transnational relations with other Nikkei communities in the Americas either. In contrast to newer diasporas consisting of first generation migrants, I suggest some older “diasporas” that have become assimilated and incorporated into their respective host countries are no longer really diasporic but have simply become ethnic minorities which operate in a national context.

Korean Diasporic Returns

This chapter provides background context about the Korean diaspora and diasporic return. The relatively large size of the Korean diaspora compared to other Asian diasporas is first discussed along with the importance of return and ethnic return migration in the Korean diaspora. The chapter then discusses these two types of diasporic return and outlines the objectives of the book, which examines various types of diasporic returns to the South Korean homeland among members of the Korean diaspora from a comparative perspective. In addition to the causes of diasporic return and diasporic engagement policies, the book analyzes the different experiences of diasporic returnees, which depend on their nationality, their social class status, and their generational distance from the homeland.

The Causes of Diasporic Return: A Comparative Perspective

This chapter begins with a historical and contemporary overview of the Korean diaspora with a focus on diasporic and ethnic return migration and compares it to other Asian diasporas covered in this book. The chapter then analyzes the various causes of return and ethnic return migration in these Asian diasporas, which are driven more by instrumental and practical motives rather than primordial ethnic attachments and affinities to the homeland. The role of homeland governments’ diasporic engagement policies is also examined, which reach out to diasporic populations as an asset and resource and encourages them to return home. These policies are based on instrumental concerns related to the role that diasporas can play in national economic development, but also on a strong sense of ethnocultural affinity between homeland governments and their diasporic peoples.

Japanese American Ethnic Return Migration Across the Generations

Researchers have yet to systematically analyze internal differences among specific ethnic return migrant groups, especially in terms of generational distance from the ancestral homeland. This paper will examine differences in the ethnic return migration experiences of Japanese Americans from the second to the fourth generation. I argue that the amount of ethnic return and level of homeland immersion do not naturally decline across the generations in a unilinear manner because of increasing cultural assimilation and social incorporation into mainstream American society. Instead of following such predictable patterns, the level of homeland engagement of different generations of Japanese Americans is much more complicated and contingent and also depends on their specific historical and contemporary ethnic experiences.

Ethnic return migration in east Asia: Japanese Brazilians in Japan and conceptions of homeland

This chapter examines migration and mobility in Asian borderlands by taking a view from the margins of contemporary nation-states. Drawing on ethnographic research at the China-Vietnam borderland, this chapter discusses the various ways in which borderland traders carefully negotiate state-determined border spaces and produce alternative routes and relations that constitute transgressive livelihood strategies at the nation’s edge. Borderland mobile practices produce migrant edginess, generating controversial zones of profit and morality. Focusing on borderland permissive politics and migrant mobilities, this chapter argues that migrant practices shed light on the production of various in-between spaces, including illegal passages, immoral trade, dangerous liaisons and corrupt engagement. These practices produce new opportunities of market participation for the often marginalised and criminalised.